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If there is a silver lining in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election as president of Iran, it is that it will be more difficult for people in the West to delude themselves into thinking they are dealing with so-called pragmatists or reformers who want to end the clerical dictatorship that has brutalized the Iranian people. Such an exercise in self-deception will be far more difficult to engage in now that Americans taken hostage by Iranian students who invaded the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979, say that Mr. Ahmadinejad played a central role in the takeover, interrogating American captives and demanding harsher treatment of the hostages.

In an interview with The Washington Times, one of the Americans, Army Col. Charles Scott said he was one of the "top two or three leaders" of the gang that took over the embassy. Col. Scott, recalled that when one of the Iranian guards permitted two Americans to visit another hostage in a nearby cell, Mr. Ahmadinejad admonished the guard, telling him: "You shouldn't let these pigs out of their cells."

Early in 1979, Mr. Ahmadinejad became a leader of an organization called the Office for Strengthening of Unity Between Universities and Theological Seminaries, known as the OSU, which helped orchestrate the seizure of the embassy. The organization was set up by Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, then a close confidant of the Ayatollah Khomeini. The following year, when Khomeini staged what he referred to as an "Islamic Cultural Revolution," Mr. Ahmadinejad and the OSU helped purge dissident students and university lecturers, many of whom were arrested and subsequently executed.

During the early 1980s, he worked in the Iran Revolutionary Guards, where he developed a reputation as a brutal torturer and interrogator. His Iranian enemies claim he worked as an executioner during the 1980s at Evin Prison, one of the most brutal detention facilities run by the Iranian regime. In 1986, Mr. Ahmadinejad became a senior officer in the Special Brigade of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, which carried out attacks outside Iran's borders, including murders of dissidents. He is said to have masterminded a series of assassinations in Europe and the Middle East, including the July 1989 assassination of Abdorrahman Qassemiou, an Iranian Kurdish leader who was gunned down in Vienna. In 1997, he organized Ansar-e-Hezbollah, an Islamist vigilante group best known for beating up students and other dissidents inside Iran.

Mr. Ahmadinejad is "Khomeini at a younger age, with more zeal than the old lunatic had," according to Aryo Pirouznia, an Iranian dissident who runs the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran, which is working to replace the Islamist dictatorship. Mr. Pirouznia points out that Mr. Ahmadinejad (one of eight candidates left in the race after the ruling mullahs disqualified more than 1,000 others) has no mandate from the Iranian electorate. Indeed, Mr. Ahmadinejad's victory suggests that the darkest elements of the Iranian regime are ascendant. President Bush would do well to remind our European friends that we ignore such unpleasant realities at our peril.

Mr. Pirouznia points out that Mr. Ahmadinejad (one of eight candidates left in the race after the ruling mullahs disqualified more than 1,000 others) has no mandate from the Iranian electorate. Indeed, Mr. Ahmadinejad's victory suggests that the darkest elements of the Iranian regime are ascendant.

I agree. But somebody better tell Christiana Amanpour, who keeps saying 'his landslide victory' on CNN. The problem is most of the western press is repeating the Mullah PR bullshit (Amanpour has to in order to supply her family with security in Iran), and then they go further like Amanpour and portray a working class hero image to make it appear as if the majority of Iranians, 'the urban poor', elected the 'humble son of a blacksmith'.

So now the rest of the world is starting to think that the majority of Iranians are hardline Islamist conservatives, and only a small minority of the educated want democracy! That I'm afraid is the game that is being played here, Ahmadinejad is the working class hero of the Islamic world, elected by the poor, a regular Chavez of the Middle East, fighting the Bush/Cheney axis of oil !

This is the problem with this new game, the Chavezification of Ahmadinejad.

Dear Spenta:
Good to see you back. This Christian Amanpour has no integrity, she doesn't have to lie, she knows better as what's going on in Iran. Her family are all outside of Iran, and the few distant relatives are not in harms way. She deliberately lies about Iran for personal gain, IRI pays handsomely if you take their side and pretend everything is okay. She already got her father's house back. And of course, CNN was notorious for promising sadam, they won't report anything "bad" as long as he would let them in the country. You have to be extemely corrupt these days to be in the news reporting arena, and Amanpour is the poster child.....

By the way, have you visited the "General Discussion" on this site? Looks like since JM.org closed down some of their thugs are on this site. You will find Diri, Azariactivist & Jean marie all islamist with mentality of 1979 revolutionaries, the left overs of JM, really alarming, and to know these people are still around........same lies and propaganda....

I was interested to discover that Massoumeh Ebtekar, who I believe is both Environment Minister and a Vice-President, was spokeswoman for the hostage-takers. I've also read elsewhere on your site that many of the hostage-takers went on to political careers in Iran.

I was wondering how many of them now hold high political office in the country.